Eight things we learned in Cannes

By Agnes Poirier, Special to CNN

Updated 1535 GMT (2235 HKT) May 28, 2013

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The best of Cannes 2013 – French actress Lea Seydoux kisses French-Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche as actress Adele Exarchopoulos watches after he was awarded with the Palme d'Or for the film "Blue is the Warmest Color" during the closing ceremony of the 66th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France, on Sunday, May 26. The Palme d'Or is the highest award given during the festival and is presented to the director of the winning film of the official competition.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Uma Thurman prepares to announce the Palme d'Or award on May 26.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – French actress Audrey Tautou appears on stage with director Steven Spielberg on May 26.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Actor Oscar Isaac, left, poses on stage with actress Kim Novak after he received the Grand Prix for the film "Inside Llewyn Davis" on behalf of U.S. directors Joel and Ethan Coen. The Grand Prix is the second-highest honor for a film at the festival.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Kim Novak is welcomed on stage by Steven Spielberg prior to awarding the Grand Prix.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Actress Berenice Bejo hugs director Asghar Farhadi after winning the Prix d'Interpretation Feminine (best performance by an actress) for 'Le Passe' on May 26.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Director Alexander Payne holds the 'Prix D'Interpretation Masculine' (best performance by an actor) which he accepted on behalf of Bruce Dern for his performance in 'Nebraska.'

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Director James Gray and stars Marion Cotillard and Jeremy Renner attend the Cannes premiere of "The Immigrant" on May 24.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Actor Michael Cera attends the Cannes premiere of "The Immigrant" on May 24.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Marion Cotillard attends the Cannes premiere of "The Immigrant" on May 24.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Joe Jackson attends the Cannes screening of "Michael Kohlhaas" on May 24.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Heidi Klum attends the Cannes premiere of "Nebraska" on May 23.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – "The Vampire Diaries" actress and singer Kat Graham attends the Cannes premiere of "Only God Forgives" on May 22.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Jessica Chastain attends the Cannes premiere of "All Is Lost" on May 22.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Model Alessandra Ambrosio attends the Cannes premiere of "All Is Lost" on May 22.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – "Star Trek Into Darkness" star Zachary Quinto arrives at the Cannes premiere of "All Is Lost" on May 22.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Robert Redford arrives at the Cannes premiere of "All Is Lost" on May 22.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Petra Nemcova attends the Cannes premiere of "All Is Lost" on May 22.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Kristin Scott Thomas attends the Cannes premiere of "Only God Forgives" on May 22.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Sharon Stone attends the Cannes premiere of "Behind the Candelabra" on May 21.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Matt Damon attends the Cannes premiere of "Behind the Candelabra" on May 21.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Alec Baldwin and wife Hilaria Thomas kiss at Cannes' "Seduced and Abandoned" photocall on May 21.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – James Franco attends the Cannes premiere of "As I Lay Dying" with Ahna O'Reilly and Beth Grant.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Adrien Brody attends the Cannes premiere of "Cleopatra" on May 21 with Lara Nieto.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Milla Jovovich attends the Cannes premiere of "Cleopatra" on May 21.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Chris Tucker attends the Cannes premiere of "Cleopatra" on May 21.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Dita Von Teese attends the Cannes premiere of "Cleopatra" on May 21.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – A view from the "Cleopatra" cocktail at Cannes on May 21.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Clive Owen and Marion Cotillard attend the "Blood Ties" premiere on May 20.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Zoe Saldana attends the premiere of "Blood Ties" at the Cannes Film Festival on May 20.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Rosario Dawson attends the Cannes premiere of "As I Lay Dying" on May 20.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Emmanuelle Riva arrives at the May 20 "Hiroshima mon Amour" screening at Cannes.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Aishwarya Rai attends the May 20 Cannes premiere at "Blood Ties."

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Paula Patton and Robin Thicke attend The Weinstein Company Party at Cannes on May 19.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – "Inside Llewyn Davis" co-stars Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan attend a Cannes photocall on May 19.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Jessica Biel attends the "Inside Llewyn Davis" screening at Cannes on May 19.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Kirsten Dunst attends the May 19 "Inside Llewyn Davis" screening at Cannes.

The best of Cannes 2013 – Christoph Waltz attends the May 19 Cannes screening of "Inside Llewyn Davis."

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Jane Fonda attends the "Inside Llewyn Davis" screening at Cannes on May 19.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban attend the "Inside Llewyn Davis" screening on May 19.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Director Francis Lawrence and stars Jennifer Lawrence, Sam Claflin and Liam Hemsworth attend the Cannes "Hunger Games: Catching Fire" party on May 18.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Eva Longoria attends the May 18 Cannes screening of "Jimmy P. Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian."

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The best of Cannes 2013 – U.K. singer Cheryl Cole attends the Cannes screening of "Jimmy P. Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian."

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Jennifer Lawrence attends the May 18 Cannes screening of "Jimmy P. Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian."

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The best of Cannes 2013 – "Hunger Games" star Liam Hemsworth arrives at the screening of "Jimmy P. (Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian" on May 18.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Berenice Bejo attends the May 17 Cannes premiere of "Le Passe."

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Emma Watson attends the May 16 screening of "The Bling Ring."

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The best of Cannes 2013 – "Fruitvale Station's" Michael B. Jordan and Octavia Spencer attend the movie's Cannes screening dinner on May 16.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Solange Knowles attends "The Great Gatsby" premiere in Cannes, France, on May 15.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Leonardo DiCaprio at "The Great Gatsby" premiere.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Elizabeth Debicki and Leonardo DiCaprio arrive at "The Great Gatsby" premiere.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan and Tobey Maguire pose together at "The Great Gatsby" premiere.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan at "The Great Gatsby" premiere.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Carey Mulligan and director Baz Luhrmann at "The Great Gatsby" premiere.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Joel Edgerton and Baz Luhrmann at "The Great Gatsby" premiere.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Isla Fisher at "The Great Gatsby" premiere.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Freida Pinto at "The Great Gatsby" premiere.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Julianne Moore at "The Great Gatsby" premiere.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Cindy Crawford at "The Great Gatsby" premiere.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Lana Del Rey at "The Great Gatsby" premiere.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Steven Spielberg at "The Great Gatsby" premiere.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Jimmy Jean-Louis at "The Great Gatsby" premiere.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Hayley Roberts and David Hasselhoff at "The Great Gatsby" premiere.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Georgia May Jagger at "The Great Gatsby" premiere.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Zhang Yuqi at "The Great Gatsby" premiere.

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The best of Cannes 2013 – Paz Vega at "The Great Gatsby" premiere.

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Story highlights

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1) Cannes, where arts meet politics. By awarding the Palme d'Or to Abdelatiff Kechiche's three hour long Sapphic love story, "Blue is the Warmest Colour," Steven Spielberg, president of the Cannes jury, may not have wanted to make a political point, as he claimed in the post-awards news conference, but the fact is that he did just that. As France became a week ago the ninth European country (and 14th in the world), to legalize same-sex marriage, and at the very moment as a 250,000 strong right-wing march was demonstrating in the streets of Paris against it, the Cannes film festival was awarding the highest accolade in world cinema to a lesbian love story. France's younger generation, as embodied by 18-year-old Adèle, is about to show its elders that love can take many shapes.

2) There is no such thing as bad publicity. He may have waited for the last film in competition to appear on Cannes's Croisette but the arrival of disgraced ex-IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, accompanied by his new partner, fired up the hundreds of paparazzi lining the red carpet. We don't know whether the man the French call DSK chose especially to attend "Only Lovers Left Alive," a vampire love story by Jim Jarmusch or whether it was a coincidence. Many of us in Cannes thought, however, that Strauss-Kahn should have instead chosen to attend Nicolas Winding Refn's "Only God Forgives," a more appropriately named film for the man whose political career ended abruptly in a hotel suite in Manhattan in May 2011.

3) Bad weather. The strong winds and torrential rain that blighted the first week of the festival were responsible for a few memorable cancellations and wet looks. Guests arrived soaked to the party for "The Great Gatsby" at midnight, while many scantily clad women, with a mascara fudged look, caught bronchitis. Later in the week, the musical flash mob planned to celebrate the centenary of Bollywood had to be canceled, and so was the famous yearly pétanque competition organized between stars.

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4) Television vs. Cinema. Stephen Frears and Steven Soderbergh were showing their latest films, in fact TV dramas, both produced by HBO. The first one about Mohammed Ali's greatest fight against the Supreme Court in the early 1970s over his refusal to serve in Vietnam; and the second, about entertainer legend Liberace, with Hollywood stars Michael Douglas and Matt Damon playing the leading roles. "Behind the Candelabra," Soderbergh's Liberace biopic, was deemed "too gay" by Hollywood studios: a shame as this will bar the formidable duo of actors from being considered for next year's Oscars. "TV is really taking control of a conversation that used to be the exclusive domain of movies," said director Steven Soderbergh at Cannes' news conference, and added "I think it's a second golden age of TV that's happening in the States now."

5) Old is gold. While 80-year-old Kim Novak, 87-year-old Jerry Lewis and 77-year-old Alain Delon were given standing ovations on the red carpet, the market was abuzz with film projects about baby-boomers and aimed at a worldwide senior audience, a large and well-off age-group with time on their hands to fill movie theatres. Among American film projects much talked about: "Look of Love" with Annette Bening and Ed Harris, "And So It Goes" with Michael Douglas, "Life Itself" with Morgan Freeman and Diane Keaton.

6) East is East. Asian investors and producers were ubiquitous on the Croisette this year. With Jia Zangke in competition with a Touch of Sin, and which received the best script award, China was at the forefront. "China is coming on strong not just as a market place for international motion pictures, but coming on strong as a creative force," Steven Spielberg told a press conference.

7) Style is not all. The visually striking film by Danish film director Nicolas Winding Refn, with Ryan Gosling in the leading role, was booed by film critics. Shot by Stanley Kubrick's last lighting cameraman, Larry Smith, this tale of ruthless violence is formally superb but its total lack of humanity, or, as some critics have put its "Nazi nihilism," have in the end done a major disservice to its author and the cast as a whole. Ryan Gosling's impassive performance mostly irritated critics who much preferred Alexander Payne's "Nebraska," a story of a man on the cusp of dementia (played by 76-year-old actor Bruce Dern), looked after by his son. It seems that the jury shared film critics' concerns; they indeed rewarded Bruce Dern with the Best Actor Award while Refn left Cannes empty-handed.

8) New rising talents. While paparazzi focused on the stars walking up the red carpet and the films in main competition, sidebar sections offered its harvest of new talents. The Palestinian film "Omar," by Hany Abu Assad, shot in the West Bank, was awarded the jury prize of the Un Certain Regard section. As for the best First Film award, it was given, for the first time ever, to a film from Singapore, "Ilo Ilo," directed by 29-year-old Anthony Chen and selected in the Directors' Fortnight sidebar. In 2007, his short film had already received an award in Cannes.